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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23611342">Interlude: Noise on the Ground</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirelyn/pseuds/Lirelyn'>Lirelyn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Long Slow Yes Job [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Leverage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Asexual Parker (Leverage), Multi, Not that it comes up, POV Parker (Leverage), Parker (Leverage)-centric, it doesn't come up that's the point, or possibly gray/demisexual, pun half-intended but what I mean is Parker doesn't think about sex very much</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:02:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,870</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23611342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirelyn/pseuds/Lirelyn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker loves her boys so much, but their feelings get awfully loud. Sometimes a thief just needs to hang out in the rafters for a while.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Sophie Devereaux &amp; Parker (Leverage)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Long Slow Yes Job [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672750</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>251</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Interlude: Noise on the Ground</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Parker hoisted herself into the rafters of the brewpub’s back office and hung there, swinging lightly in her rigging. She took a deep breath in and let it out as slowly as she could, counting the beats. Finally she could let all the buzzing and back-and-forth float away. Finally she was up high, where it was quiet.</p><p>Parker lived at three different heights these days. On the ground was with other people, where they wanted things from her and she wanted things from them and she had to figure out the right things to say and do to get what she needed. In the old days, on-the-ground meant nothing but frustration and shame, so her whole goal was to get up and away as quickly as possible. Now it wasn’t so bad; sometimes it was even good. With her own people, Eliot and Hardison and Sophie and Nate, it was almost always good. Sometimes they took care of what she needed before she even knew what that was, and sometimes she could take care of them too.</p><p>Middle height was where she went to plan. She had to get high enough to be outside the picture, but not so high she couldn’t see details and faces. Middle height was where she could make decisions and it didn’t matter how people felt about them. She didn’t do middle height the same way Nate did. Nate always made a big deal about how part of his job was pushing the team even if it meant keeping secrets and tricking them, but Parker didn’t see it that way. Eliot and Hardison did what she told them to even if they weren’t sure they could. She never needed to trick them and she didn’t ever want to. She wasn’t sure if that made her a better or worse leader than Nate, and the one time she’d tried asking about it Sophie had started talking over her very fast and changed the subject. Anyway, most of the time she didn’t even need to tell them what to do. The three of them worked together like a climbing rig: straps, buckle, and rope, sliding and connecting smoothly as they each did what needed to be done.</p><p>Middle height was fun, but up high was home. Up high there were only hard, clear things like wind, metal, and glass. Up high, the only questions that mattered had right-and-wrong answers: how strong was the rope? How fast was the wind? Where was the next tumbler? Up high she, too, was a hard, clear thing. Up where no one could see her, with wind swirling around her, she became an object in space. The wind pressed against her and told her <em>you are here,</em> the metal and glass yielded to her touch and told her <em>you are here.</em></p><p>Actual height didn’t always matter. Picking locks was an up-high activity, and standing on a bungee-jumping platform with Hardison was an on-the-ground activity, and most of the time she did her middle work from the floor, although she did occasionally hoist herself a few feet into the air if she was getting stuck on a plan. But when she wanted clarity and quiet, when she wanted to feel fully safe and alone, nothing was as good as actually being up high.</p><p>Today she was up high indoors, because she’d been disappearing to rooftops a lot lately and Hardison was starting to worry that she was upset. On-the-ground reasoning — but Hardison, who lived his whole life on the ground except when he was hacking, had picked out this place specifically so she’d have an up-high spot right inside their home base, so the levels could get a little mixed up and that was okay and sometimes good.</p><p>She wasn’t upset, not in the way Hardison worried about. It was just very noisy on the ground lately. It started the day Hardison found out that Eliot sometimes dated guys, and it hadn’t really let up since then except when they were actively working a job. When the pressure was on they focused and worked as smoothly as always, but as soon as they had breathing room? Everything the boys said and did with each other was crowded with static, layers and layers of feelings hissing and squeaking and clanging back and forth.</p><p>In the old days she would have tuned it all out. She’d have noticed some extra weirdness, decided it didn’t concern her, and ignored it. But she wanted to understand people the way she understood locks and ropes and windspeed, and she was getting a lot better at it especially when it came to <em>her</em> people.</p><p>Also, she cared. She wanted to see Alec’s face light up the way it had when he’d first thought about dating Eliot. She wanted to see Eliot go all soft and warm and relaxed the way he sometimes did, just for a second, when Hardison flirted at him and he forgot to be scared. So she paid attention to all the back-and-forth between them, and sometimes she found a way she could help. It felt good, but it was a lot to take in all the time.</p><p>Hardison’s worrying about her was another layer of noise. That was why she hadn’t gone to the rooftop today. If she disappeared too often, he would start asking her again if she was okay with everything, and she would have to tell him again that she really was, because she only got jealous when she thought someone was going to steal him. Hardison already belonged to Eliot and both of them belonged to her, so there was nothing to be stolen. But he still seemed to worry there might be something about it that was making her unhappy, when it was really just the noise.</p><p>She’d tried talking to Sophie about that part, about how Hardison asked her the same questions even though she’d already explained how she felt. Sophie said that was just a relationship thing: sometimes you had to have the same conversations over again because it wasn’t about knowing things, it was about feeling them. She said it might not be about how Parker was feeling at all, it might be Hardison’s way of dealing with something <em>he</em> was feeling, and that if it only happened a little bit it was best to be patient but if it happened a lot she could tell Hardison to stop asking. For now, she was trying to be patient.</p><p>Parker adjusted her rigging and tipped back so she was hanging upside down, feet resting lightly against a rafter. If her head was a cup, all the thoughts and worries and feelings and noise would be falling out of it now, drifting down to the floor of the office, where she could collect them later. Now, here, she could just be quiet. There wasn’t any wind, but there was the gentle tug of gravity, another hard, clear, constant thing. Upside down was the best way to feel how it pulled at her, firm and assuring. Gravity only had one message, <em>this way,</em> and Parker got to decide how far she wanted to go along with that.</p><p>It was so weird how some people were scared of being up high. Parker knew the tensile strength of her ropes and harness, she knew how much weight the rafters could bear, and she knew gravity. Everything unpredictable was far below. It was the safest place she could imagine being.</p><p>Parker often slipped into half-sleep when she was dangling up high, so she didn’t know how much later it was that the sounds of guitar strumming floated up from below. She opened her eyes slowly; it didn’t really matter what was happening down there, but she was idly curious. She saw the back of Eliot’s head and shoulders, leaning forward on the edge of the easy chair, his hand curved around the neck of the guitar poking out on one side. He was moving his hands, she knew, but from here it just looked like he was holding and rocking the instrument and it was humming back to him. She closed her eyes and rocked herself a little, to match it.</p><p>At the first scrape of the violin her eyes flew open again. That was unexpected. Why was it unexpected? She had to send her mind down a little way, down close to middle-height, to figure out why she was surprised.</p><p>Hardison and Eliot hadn’t played together in years, not since sometime back in Boston. Nobody ever knew which one of them had started it. Hardison’s violin came out for one job, Eliot’s guitar for another, and a few weeks later Parker, Nate, and Sophie had walked in on them playing together. Sophie had grabbed Parker’s and Nate’s arms to stop them interrupting. Hardison’s strings moved faster and rougher than in the concert hall, Eliot strummed and thumped his foot and hummed a wordless phrase. Sophie’s face looked like it was early Christmas.</p><p>They’d played like that regularly for months, and then they’d stopped. Parker had liked it when they played. They were clever and quick with their fingers, and she could see that they were talking to each other somehow with their eyes and their strings and their movements. Parker didn’t understand the language but she knew it was coming together right. It felt the same as when they were on a job and perfectly in sync, knowing what needed to happen next and who was supposed to do it.</p><p>She was curious about why they’d stopped and how they’d started again, but that was on-the-ground stuff and she could find out later. She was glad to find that she could listen and still be up high, because this music thing was just between them and it was <em>working.</em> They moved together, their strings making different sounds that fit against each other, and Parker let everything fall away except the sounds, and the feel of gravity against her body.</p><p>It wasn’t just sounds though: back in Boston it had been, but now the music was making her feel something. It felt happy, eager, saying that it was good to be alive and moving. It felt the way she felt when she was running full-tilt toward the edge of a roof, getting ready to dive down, every part of her working just right, and that lift of excitement for what was coming next.</p><p>She didn’t usually feel anything this big when she was up high, but it was okay? It was okay. It was exciting, that thumping rush, and she was still far distant, still an object in space, the feelings moving through her like waves. Pulsing. Running. Diving. It moved around her, clear and direct as wind. Music could be an up-high thing. She’d had no idea.</p><p>In the back of her mind she knew there were more feelings to be had, feelings about her boys, her brilliant, precious boys collapsing all the layers of noise between them into strong, clear notes. All that was waiting on the ground and she’d pick it up when she was ready. For now she was just Parker, object in space, feeling like she was flying.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've been working through the DVD commentaries and a couple weeks ago I got the The Studio Job, and John Rogers declares it canon that Hardison learns to fiddle and the boys start jamming together. After I was done squealing with glee I immediately started planning how to fit that into this series. Making music together is one of my favorite kinds of intimacy, and it fits really well with the other ways the team naturally expresses intimacy and connection (mostly nonverbal and expressed in action)... I have a lot of feelings about this y'all.</p><p>That same weekend I decided this series needed a Parker-centric piece. Eliot/Hardison is the relationship that's changing dramatically, but Parker's very much a part of it and I wanted to spend a little more time on how she's feeling about everything. Also I love getting into Parker's head.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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